Happy Harvest to all our readers! As many of you know, our family likes to recommend good, wholesome, and inspiring media through our yearly lists that come out every January and are archived here. One area of media that we have been into lately and one I may add as a category is podcasts. For those of you that spend a good deal of time in the car and just do not have time to read print media, subscribing to multiple podcasts can be a good way to stay in touch with current news, monitor popular cultural trends, and most importantly, deepen your relationship with the Creator of the Universe.

In the news category, The World and Everything in It produced by World News Group is my one-stop-shop for current news, news opinion, and cultural analysis. Their Monday segment always contains something about the economy and recent Supreme Court decisions; though most of the technical arguments go over my head, there is enough familiar, personal banter to keep the conversation from getting dry. Wednesday features world news and a segment on politics in Washington. Culture Friday is my personal favorite as they do movie reviews and have a conversation on the larger cultural trends in society from a Biblical perspective. Overall, World’s mission of “objectively Biblical journalism that informs, educates, and inspires” leads them to report on overstated facts in very understated prose. If you are tired of the shrill rhetoric from either side of the political perspective, yet desire something conservative and Christian, this podcast may be for you.

Similarly, from the World family of podcasts, comes my second recommendation, Listening In. Host Warren Smith provides a deep-dive conversation with many different newsmakers and influential people from a diverse spectrum. I have personally received over ten good book recommendations from this podcast which I have read cover to cover (and I do not often finish book recommendations). Because Smith has been around in Christian broadcasting for several decades, his journalism does not succumb to hype and sensationalism, but still seeks to gently probe for more than mere surface answers.

Finally, I will put in a plug for something outside of the family of World News Group. The Plugged In Show from Focus on the Family features a light-hearted weekly conversation on movies, video games, and a whole host of popular culture especially as it relates to children and the family. Beyond just counting the amount and variety of potentially harmful material, the show hosts seek to go the extra mile of providing parents with the overarching philosophies behind popular entertainment. For example, in one review of the most recent Dr. Strange movie, they talked about this whole idea of the multiverse and where it comes from. While informing parents of potential pitfalls, the hosts never devolve into finger-wagging and shaming. It is overall a quite lively and funny discussion.

Of course, I am not providing an extensive list of everything our family listens to, just the podcasts that get frequent play (at least by me). I hope at least that these three may give you all something that you have been desiring or perhaps never knew existed. Happy listening and let me know what you think!